Just steps away from the White House, the rabbi who lights the National Hanukkah Menorah took the opportunity to trash Obama’s outrageous decision to allow the United Nations to pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and portions of Jerusalem as illegal.

Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch, turned an Obama administration official’s speech about “fighting darkness with light” on its head, evoking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who has had an antagonistic relationship with President Obama — and urging Jews not to despair about the “darkness” cast by the United Nations vote, Washington Post’sDaniel Chaitin reports.

Shemtov spoke after remarks by Adam Szubin, acting treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, and the Obama administration’s representative Sunday at the event.

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Szubin delivered a short speech focusing mainly on the significance and symbology of candles and light as they pertain to Hanukkah and later helped to light a 30-foot menorah.

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Secretary Szubin spoke before of fighting darkness with light,” Shemtov said. “I remember those words being spoken to a particular man by the Rebbe [Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson] many many years ago on Simchat Torah,” an annual Jewish holiday which marks the conclusion of one reading of the Torah and beginning of another.

“The Rebbe told him you are working in a place where there is great grief and darkness, but remember that in that place of darkness, you can only counter it by lighting a candle. By creating light,” Shemtov continued. “That man was Benjamin Netanyahu, and he was at the time the ambassador to the United Nations.”

Shemtov then went on to bring up Friday’s 14-0 U.N. Security Council vote. The Obama administration abstained from voting, allowing the measure to pass and marking a significant shift in U.S. policy.

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“So as I know that some of us are so sad at what happened there with regard to Israel,” Shemtov said. “We must remember that the way to counter any darkness, any disappointment is not with harsh rhetoric, not with anger, but when we create light, the darkness dissipates.”

Daily Mail reports that the Obama administration has faced harsh criticism from several quarters for the UN resolution, including President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump had demanded the US exercise its veto rights on the vote, and later said that things would be ‘different’ at the UN under his watch.
On Friday Ben Rhodes, the White House’s deputy national security adviser, dismissed Trump’s objections.

“Our position is that there is one president at a time,” he said. “President Obama is the president until January 20, and we are taking this action of course as US policy.”

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“We could not in good conscience veto a resolution that expressed concerns about the very trends that are eroding the foundation for a two-state solution.”

The reverberations from Friday’s vote were still being felt in Israel on Friday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a meeting with the ambassadors of the ten countries that voted in favor of the resolution, as well as the US ambassador.

A furious Netanyahu even accused Obama of organizing the vote itself, according to NPR.

“From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed,” he said in Hebrew.

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